“That is generous, truly.” She really should have moved faster. Retreated far beyond the bar and the reach of these men and into the safety of the night. “Yet I must decline.”

“Pity. But of course, I will not insist.” He patted her hand reassuringly. “But you have only to ask if you change your mind.”

She looked up at the colonel beneath her lashes. He was probably in his forties, with a pleasant face and a ready smile. A perfectly ordinary-looking man in a different time and place, but anything but ordinary in the here and now.

She wrapped her fingers around her glass and raised it to her lips, pretending to take a sip. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the bartender in his white bar coat casually mixing a drink. She was reasonably convinced that he harboured anti-Nazi sentiments, but she couldn’t be sure. She was, however, quite sure that he was listening to their conversation, so she chose her words with care.

“There is, actually, a different matter that I wished to speak to you about,” she said in a low voice.

“Oh?” Meyer removed his spectacles and then polished the lenses.

Estelle set her drink back on the gleaming bar top and undid the necklace that hung at her throat. “The Reichsmarschall might have been taken with my songs, but I believe he was taken with these emeralds more,” she said, laying the necklace on the bar. In the light, the gems pulsed with an unearthly glow.

“He does covet such treasures,” Meyer agreed.

“At the time, he expressed his desire to possess them,” she continued, ignoring the shudder that rose at the memory of his sausagelike fingers at her throat. “I confess that I declined his offer. They were a gift from my parents.” Her words were ridiculous, really, because what Hermann Göring wanted, Hermann Göring took. It was only a matter of time before the emeralds disappeared into his burgeoning collection of gems pillaged from all over Paris. Estelle figured she might as well extract an advantage while she could.

She slid the necklace toward him. “I know how hard you work to keep operations here running smoothly and the Reichsmarschall appeased. I thought that perhaps you should offer these jewels to him. I suspect such a gesture would be well regarded.”

The colonel replaced his spectacles and regarded her curiously. “Why would you do that? Why not offer them to him yourself?”

Estelle shrugged, her fur wrap sliding off her shoulder. “I was hoping you might be able to do something for me in return.”

“Such as?”

“I cannot eat emeralds.” She leaned in and dropped her voice. “And I do not wish to spend my days queuing for rations that always seem to run out.”